


The Claire

by cutsycat



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21796960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: After divorcing Diane, Gibbs is forced to become a space pirate just to make ends meet. That's not good enough for Diane, though, as she keeps interfering in his crew's jobs. Can Tony and the rest of the Claire crew stop Diane? Or will Diane succeed in forcing them out of the space pirate business?
Relationships: Anthony DiNozzo/Jethro Gibbs
Comments: 28
Kudos: 32
Collections: 2019 NCIS Secret Santa Gift Exchange





	The Claire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rose_malmaison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_malmaison/gifts).



"You know, maybe you weren't man enough for her. Maybe that's why she came to me."

Gibbs snarled and buried his fist in the big ugly brute's mouth. "There's no way you're more of a man than me."

A younger, but no less stupid looking man jumped Gibbs for that comment and Tony stepped in, letting the guy run into his fist before he could get to Gibbs. The other men in the corner took exception to this and rushed Gibbs and Tony. Tony met the brown haired blue eyed one head on, literally, as he head-butted the guy into the table they'd come from.

He was already turning to face the next one when Gibbs swung the guy closest to him into the one Tony was planning to take on. McGee and Palmer weren't about to be left out and together the two of them sent an entire keg of beer sailing through the air to land on top of the five men who'd had the audacity to call Gibbs out in the middle of Divinity's Reach. 

Tony tossed a wad of money onto the bar, "That should cover the damages."

As one the entire crew of the Claire turned and left. McGee, Palmer, Gibbs, DiNozzo, Bishop, Ducky, and Abby all marched out of the bar in Divinity and headed for their ship. 

"What started all of that?" Abby whispered. "I was too far away to hear anything."

"The ex," Bishop, McGee, Palmer, and DiNozzo all chorused.

"Again?" Abby sighed before turning to Gibbs. "Gibbs you really need to do something about her."

"What do you want me to do, Abs? Kill her?"

"No, of course not." Abby shook out her long black hair, letting it cascade down her shoulders like a waterfall. She was in her full on goth outfit, which she insisted made her more bad ass. Privately, Tony just thought it made her look weird, but he knew better than to say anything.

"Let's not start this again. We all know what really happened and while that bitch may have had sex with that ugly troll, she's just jealous because Gibbs' crew is better than hers."

"Here, here," Ducky agreed.

Tony didn't bother mentioning that Diane was desperately trying to find someone who was as good in bed as Gibbs was. Tony didn't know this first hand, yet, but he wanted to. The stories of Gibbs' suaveness were told in every port around the galaxy and that just didn't happen if there wasn't some truth to it. 

Gibbs though, he liked the redheads. Tony hadn't figured out how he could compete with them or he would have already been all over Gibbs. He'd had a crush on their Captain ever since he joined the Claire's crew.

That in and of itself was an interesting story. After all, joining a pirate crew wasn't like signing up for the Army. You couldn't just say hey I want to join, go through some tests and training and boom be a pirate. No, joining a pirate ship required cunning and trickery to get them to even notice you.

Even back then Gibbs’ crew was well known for their skills and for picking people up and spitting them back out. If you could last more than a month under Gibbs' command, you could make it anywhere. Of course that meant that finding the Claire was especially difficult if they didn’t want to be found.

Many of Tony’s frat brothers had thought he was crazy for leaving his respectable job to join a pirate crew, but Tony had always hated his job. He’d worked under his father for years and despite his father’s proclamations that there was nothing shady about his business, Tony had felt dirty working there and watching Senior take money from the gullible. When Tony had gotten an unexpected inheritance that had guaranteed he’d be set for life, if he was careful with his money, he’d happily waved goodbye to his father and quit the very next day.

Nobody blamed him for that. No, what bothered them was when he announced that he was going to try to join the Claire’s crew. The Claire was one of the most well known pirate ships by then and Tony was super bored watching his money breed and make more money.

He was very good at investing, but it didn’t provide the excitement he’d needed and when he’d seen a news article that made him realize the Claire was literally the next planet over, he’d jumped at the chance to bring some spice to his life. He’d rushed over to the port they were at and tried to get a meeting with the Captain, but it was impossible to get a hold of him and before Tony knew it they were gone. He hadn’t given up, though.

In fact, getting the brush off like that had only made him more determined to join the Claire’s crew. He’d read everything he could find about them and tried to build profiles on all of them and figure out what they were looking for and how to get their attention. He’d finally figured out that despite being pirates there was a moral code they followed. They never knowingly caused an innocent harm.

That was when Tony got the bright idea to get their attention by dying. Well, with luck they would rescue him and he wouldn’t actually die and if the worst happened, hopefully his frat brothers would come to the rescue. They’d all called him crazy, but they’d still agreed to check on him before he would actually run out of oxygen in his suit.

Tony had figured out where the Claire's next job would take them and he’d set himself up on their route. He’d found a derelict ship and set it up to emit a distress beacon while he himself would be in a space suit slowly running out of oxygen. Ideally, he’d have only a few minutes left when the Claire came rocketing through the asteroid belt where the ship was and registered the distress beacon.

Based on his research, he knew that Gibbs loved driving his ship too fast. It didn’t matter what was in his path. In fact, it seemed like the more objects in his path the faster he drove.

From what Tony had heard, Captain Gibbs seemed to take obstacles as a personal challenge, so Tony knew he wouldn’t be able to resist darting in and out of the asteroid belt at top speed. He’d waited for what felt like a couple of hours, but was only like 20 minutes before the Claire was right in front of his eyes. He’d been pulled inside their spaceship by two of the crew in their own space suits and the derelict ship had been towed with a tractor beam to their next destination.

The two who had rescued him introduced themselves as Abby and Tim. One was the goth girl and Tony had made the mistake of telling Abby that she looked weird. Every single person in the room had glared at him and Abby herself had stormed up to him and started poking him. “You don’t tell people that they’re weird.”

“Sorry.”

That hadn’t been the only confrontation that he’d had with the crew, though, the next one was with Gibbs himself. Apparently, Gibbs had decided that they would ransom him back to his father without talking to him about it and was pissed when his father had told Gibbs to go jump off a cliff and that he didn’t care about his son. Tony hadn’t been surprised, but now that he was finally in front of Gibbs, he was going to make the most of it to convince Gibbs to let him join the crew permanently.

Tony had calmly pointed out that he was worth more as part of their crew than they’d get even through ransom. Gibbs hadn’t believed him, but Tony had just told him to have McGee check into his financials. That had started Tony revealing that he knew way too much about the crew.

Gibbs had glared at him before grudgingly admitting that Tony would be an asset to the team. McGee had backed his claim about the money and Tony had soon wormed his way into the position of second in command despite being the last one to join the crew. 

Tony had also helped almost all of the Claire’s crew make better investing decisions with their own money. The only thing that had taken some getting used to after joining the Claire was the speed with which Gibbs drove his ship. It definitely wasn’t for those with a weak stomach. 

Tony didn’t know how McGee survived. The man turned so green on some of those tight corners that Tony was sure he was going to throw up. It hadn’t happened, yet, at least not since Tony joined the team. He’d heard from Abby that it had happened a couple of times before he joined, but apparently Tim wanted to be part of the crew so badly that he dealt with his motion sickness.

He still turned green, but he no longer threw up. It was a good thing too as they were once again on their way to another job after the bar fight. They really needed to do something about Diane.

She kept interfering with their jobs and Tony had brought it up multiple times, but he and Gibbs never agreed on what should be done about her. Tony was all for buying her out, but Gibbs insisted it wouldn’t work. Gibbs wanted to ignore the problem until it went away, but it wasn’t going away. 

Tony had then suggested marrying her off, but Gibbs insisted that he wouldn’t wish that on their worst enemies. It was making it harder and harder to pull off jobs, however. Tony knew that if they weren’t careful they were going to find themselves arrested due to complications caused by Diane.

Unlike the Claire, Diane’s crew seemed to have no moral compunctions and would do anything to get rid of competition. As the Claire was by far her best competition, a lot of Diane’s focus was on taking them out. Tony had tried to be nice about this, but everyone on the crew besides Gibbs agreed that Diane needed to be dealt with.

”Gibbs. We can’t just let her horn in on our bounties. She’s ruining our reputation.”

“It’s fine. People know us.” Gibbs took a sharp turn.

Tony braced himself, so that he wouldn’t lose his balance as the ship careened around another asteroid. “It’s not fine. It hasn’t been fine for a long time, Gibbs. We need to do something.”

“No. We’re not doing anything to Diane and that’s final!” Gibbs shouted as he slammed on the breaks and the ship screeched to a halt at their destination. 

Tony watched as Gibbs stormed off the ship. He quickly followed after. You never knew what would happen when Gibbs’ temper was riled up. Sometimes the jobs went smoothly and other times they were an absolute disaster.

This time it was clearly going to be the disaster route as Tony watched Gibbs get grabbed by Diane’s henchmen. “Damn it.”

“McGee!” Tony called over his shoulder, “Find out what Diane is up to on this planet. Gibbs has just been kidnapped.”

“What?” Abby shouted.

“We’ll get him back, Abs. Don’t worry.” Tony yelled as he chased after Gibbs and his kidnappers. 

Diane had gone too far this time. Tony didn’t care what Gibbs said. He was going to take care of her for once and for all. 

The constant run ins were bad enough, but now she’d kidnapped Gibbs. There was no forgiveness for that. He just hoped that she wasn’t planning to actually hurt Gibbs. 

Gibbs hated being injured and it would make the recovery even more painful if Tony had to nurse him back to health. Still Tony loved Gibbs and he would do whatever it took to keep Gibbs safe. He wasn’t the only one, either. The entire crew loved Gibbs.

He knew McGee and Abby and all the rest would be searching for any information to help find Gibbs too. He turned the corner where Gibbs’ kidnappers had gone, but there was no sign of them. Cursing, Tony hurried down the alley looking for any sign of Gibbs.

Tony frowned as he dialed McGee to find out what they’d found on Diane. Apparently, Diane had a drug running ring going on here and they’d stumbled into the middle of it somehow. They were pirates and Gibbs was one tough mother fucker, but they didn’t really hang out with the tougher crowds. 

They were too fast and too slick to get stuck with the bad side of the pirate dens. Unfortunately, drug running was a lot closer to the bad side of the tracks than where they usually ended up. He had a bad feeling that Gibbs was not going to come out of this one without a scratch like he usually did.

He continued to follow the directions McGee gave to Diane’s headquarters. He knew she was behind this. She’d had a grudge out for Gibbs ever since he’d proven that he was better off without her.

She robbed the guy blind in their divorce, but he’d been making more money than she’d taken from him ever since they split up. Tony was pretty sure that Diane felt she deserved a part of that split too even though Gibbs had had to find a new job after she ruined his life. When this was all over, Tony was going to make damn sure that Diane never bothered Gibbs ever again.

”Where’s Gibbs?” Tony demanded.

“Did he get tired of you and leave?”

“No. Now what did you do with him? I know you have him.”

“It’s not my problem that you can’t keep track of your Captain.”

“Where is Gibbs?” Tony growled. “I won’t ask again.”

“I don’t know. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to tear your empire apart inch by inch. Don’t think I can’t.”

Diane laughed loudly. “You and what army?”

“I don’t need an army.”

“Oh yeah?” Diane raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Tony walked up to her, menace filling every step he took. He leaned over and whispered in her ear exactly what he was going to do to her. Diane blanched.

Still she recovered her composure. “This way.”

Tony followed her and glared as soon as he noticed Gibbs’ condition. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“The bastard wouldn’t cooperate.”

Tony snorted. “You were married to him and you expected him to cooperate?”

“DiNozzo.” Gibbs coughed.

“Sorry, boss.”

Diane shoved Tony in Gibbs’ direction fully intending to capture both of them, but Tony had been expecting something like this and he grabbed her hand before she could actually shove him, twisting it behind her back. 

“That wasn’t very nice. Now you’re going to release Gibbs and leave us alone.”

Diane narrowed her eyes. “And why should I do that?”

”Because otherwise I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

“You don’t have the power to do that.”

“You forget. I already have proof of your illegal dealings, including this one.” Tony nodded his head towards Gibbs.

“You won’t get away with this.”

“Oh honey. Haven’t you heard? No one goes up against the Claire and wins.”

“Just get me out of here, DiNozzo,” Gibbs interrupted.

“On it, boss.” Tony grabbed the keys from Diane and began to unlock the cuffs and free Gibbs.

Diane glared at Tony, but she made no move to do anything and her henchmen followed her lead. Tony helped Gibbs lean on him, so that they could hobble out of there.

“Here.” Tony shoved a handful of cash at Diane. “Go find something better to do with your life. If we ever see you again, I’ll bury you so bad you won’t know what hit you.”

Diane sputtered, but by then Gibbs and Tony were gone. By the time they got back to the ship it was obvious that someone else would have to fly it. Gibbs was going to be laid up for a while.

Tony wasn’t sure what had happened to Gibbs’ leg, but it wasn’t supporting his weight. On top of that, it appeared that he’d caught a cold or something as Gibbs had been coughing the entire way back to the ship. Jimmy took over the controls, which made everyone cringe, but the only other option was Ducky and he drove so slow that they’d never get anywhere on time.

Normally, Tony would have taken over if Gibbs was unavailable, but Tony would be nursing Gibbs back to health for the foreseeable future. He’d already put plans into motion to make sure that Diane heeded his warning and stopped trying to come after them. Gibbs had already protested Tony taking care of him, but Tony had ignored him.

Tony helped Gibbs to the bathroom and made sure he had food and coffee and sometimes even Bourbon and anything else that Gibbs needed. Gibbs couldn't get Tony to leave him alone for even a minute. Tony insisted that he had nothing better to do and the crew could run the ship fine without either of them in charge.

They'd been following this routine for about a month where Gibbs bitched about Tony helping him and Tony ignored him and continued to make sure that Gibbs' every need was met. Gibbs' protests had gotten weaker and weaker as time went on and he saw that Tony wasn't trying to baby him. Gibbs had finally been forced to admit, ”You know being taken care of by you isn’t that bad.”

“I’m happy to do it." Tony hoped to encourage Gibbs to allow him to look after him more frequently. After all, they'd been getting along even better than Tony expected while Gibbs was nursed back to health.

“Why?” Gibbs frowned, trying to make sense of what was happening here.

Deciding to take a chance even though he had no reason to expect Gibbs felt the same, Tony blurted, “I love you.”

“Why? I’m a grumpy old man with an ex-wife that won’t leave me alone.”

“I’ve taken care of that.”

“Tony,” Gibbs warned, not happy about Tony doing something to Diane without his input, but appreciating the initiative Tony showed in solving that particular problem.

“We’re partners, Gibbs. We fit together in ways that I never imagined possible.” Tony wasn't just talking about what he hoped would soon be a physical relationship, but also how close they'd grown recently. He had expected the convalescence period to be full of arguments and instead they'd mostly sat in comfortable silence, though there had been a few unexpected conversations that revealed some information that Tony hadn't previously known about Gibbs.

“Come mere, Tony,” Gibbs ordered.

Tony moved closer, wondering if he was about to get a head slap for daring to love Gibbs only to be shocked as Gibbs pulled him down and into a kiss. As they pulled apart, Gibbs whispered, “I love you too, Tony.”

"Since when?" Tony started only to be interrupted by cheers from the bridge.

"Since that damn fool move you pulled with your space suit to join our crew."

Tony and Gibbs looked at each other with fond expressions before a louder cheer went up and they could clearly hear their names. “Guess we weren’t good at hiding our feelings from them, huh?”

“Guess not.” Gibbs smiled back at Tony and patted his bed. Tony settled down on the bed next to Gibbs and wrapped his arm around Gibbs.

“Do you think she’s really gone?”

“I’ll make sure of it, Gibbs. You won’t have to worry about her ever again.”

“Thank you.” Gibbs knew that was a paltry phrase to explain how relieved he was to not have to deal with Diane ever again. 

“It’s the least I can do for you.” Tony didn’t bother mentioning that he’d hired Fornell to seduce Diane and marry her. Tony had reached an agreement with Fornell on a monthly amount that he would pay Fornell to keep Diane out of their lives. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been given Fornell was already in love with Diane, but it was still a decent chunk of change.

Tony didn’t care, however. Not having to worry about Diane more than made up for any inconvenience the lack of money would be. Plus, the entire crew made more than enough money thanks to Tony’s investment strategies. 

He wouldn’t even notice the minor loss that was going to Fornell. He would be far too busy with Gibbs and the crew of the Claire, who had truly become a family to him. He felt like he was even closer to them than his frat brothers, especially where Gibbs was concerned.

Someday, he might introduce Gibbs to his frat brothers, but first they had a long way to go. Even though they loved each other, didn't mean that everything would be sunshine and roses in their relationship. Tony expected a few bumps, but honestly he was looking forward to finding them and working through them with Gibbs.


End file.
